"When I was a young boy, Poppy worked in the coal mines. Most people around there did. It was hard work and Poppy had a reputation for working fast."

"The coal mines paid workers every two weeks. The company would keep track of the number of hours you worked and how much you made. On pay day you'd get paid cash or they'd give you what was called 'scrip'. Scrip was like money and you could use it at the company store to buy food or whatever you needed. But it was only good with the company. You couldn't use it at other stores. Before they'd pay you, the company would take out however much you owed them. When I was a boy, we lived in one of the coal company's houses. So they'd take out however much for rent and for the electricity. They'd also take out however much coal you had bought to heat your house or for your pot-bellied stoves. And they'd take out however much you owed at the company store."

"The company also had a doctor who would come to the house if you were sick or if your kids were sick. The doctor's fees came out of your pay, too."

"There wasn't much left over after they took out what you owed."

"The company store kept a book of how much 'scrip' you had each week. They'd keep track of how many hours you had worked and would keep a record of how much credit you had against that. So if you ran out of money before the next payday, you could go to the company store and use the 'scrip' to buy what you needed. Sometimes we didn't have enough credit or scrip on the books and if you went to the store to get something, they'd say 'you don't have anything in the book'."

"Times were hard."

"Sometimes my mom would send us kids to the store to get groceries. It was about a mile from where we lived. We'd walk there. I think she knew that we didn't have any credit in the books, but the owners wouldn't turn down kids asking for food. I can remember my mom sending me to the store to get 45 cents worth of pork chops. For 45 cents, you could get about four of five of them back then [around 1936]. So I figured out that if I bought just 40 cents worth of pork chops, I'd have five cents left over to buy a chocolate ice cream cone. They were five cents then. I didn't ever tell my mom that I was getting ice cream cones, though."

"I wish I had kept some of the scrip. It was pretty."

Told by: Frank Cyphers

Although the following link does not have scrip used by any of the coal mines where my dad or his dad worked, it is a good example of miners' scrip and coupons and scrip metal used at other company stores in West Virginia.

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